Bunce Island - Links To North America

Links To North America

Bunce Island is best known as one of the chief suppliers of slaves to the rice industry in the British colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. Rice requires a great deal of technical knowledge for its successful cultivation, and South Carolina and Georgia planters were willing to pay premium prices for slave labor brought from what they called the "Rice Coast" of West Africa, the traditional rice-growing region stretching from what is now Senegal and Gambia in the north down to Sierra Leone and Liberia in the south.

Bunce Island was the largest British slave castle on the Rice Coast. African farmers with rice-growing skills kidnapped from inland areas were sold at the castle or at one of its many "outfactories" (trading posts) along the coast before being transported to North America. Several thousand slaves from Bunce Island were taken to the ports of Charleston (South Carolina) and Savannah (Georgia) during the second half of the 18th century. Slave auction advertisements in those cities often announced slave cargoes arriving from "Bance" or "Bense" Island.

Henry Laurens, Bunce Island's business agent in Charleston, a wealthy rice planter and slave dealer, later became President of the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War and then US envoy to Holland. Captured by the British en route to his post in Europe, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. After hostilities ended, he became one of the Peace Commissioners who negotiated US Independence under the Treaty of Paris. Tellingly, the chief negotiator on the British side was Richard Oswald, the principal owner of Bunce Island, and Laurens' friend for 30 years. US Independence was, thus, negotiated, in part, between the British owner of Bunce Island and his American business agent in South Carolina. This reflects the wealth generated by the trade in rice and slaves.

But Bunce Island was not connected just to South Carolina and Georgia; it was also linked to the Northern Colonies. Slave ships based in northern ports frequently called at Bunce Island, taking on supplies like fresh water and provisions for the Atlantic crossing, and buying slaves for sale in the British islands of the West Indies and the Southern Colonies. The North American slave ships that called at Bunce Island were sailing out of Newport (Rhode Island), New London (Connecticut), Salem (Massachusetts), and New York.